Monday, 19 February 2018

Update from Grade 5

St. Gabriel Winter Olympic Spirit week will happen next week!

Monday February 19 - FAMILY DAYTuesday February 20 - Opening Ceremonies: Wear your team coloursThursday February 22 - Outdoor Olympic Play day (morning for junior students)Friday February 23 - Closing Ceremonies: Support Team Canada by wearing your Canadian gear!Math - Class Water ConsumptionThe results are in! Students used Google Sheets to input data and create a graph. Below are a couple of examples that students have created.From the data collected, we were able to make some observations and draw conclusions. We had discussions about what the data actually tells us. For example, it is clear that the boys consumed more water than the girls - about twice as much.

But, why? Well, as we looked closer we noticed that we collected information from 14 boys and 8 girls, which is about double. Makes sense right? Well, some of the students thought that maybe the difference had to do with the fact that boys are more active than girls at recess. But, we challenged this thought. Is that a fact or a stereotype?

To help us understand the data, we calculated the mean of water consumed for both the boys and the girls. Maybe this would give us a better understanding because the number of boys to girls was so lopsided. What we found was that each boy consumed about 4.2L and each girl consumed about 3.6L over the two weeks. That is only a 600mL difference! So, now we understand that on average, girls and boys actually drink about the same amount of water!This project has sparked a new idea! Our class is curious to see which gender is the most active. So, as a class, we came up with questions and have created a Google Form. The class is going to share this form with all 3 grade 5 classes at our school and then analyze the data. We look forward to diving deeper into this inquiry!